Ashley F. Miller is a writer, activist, and communications scholar from South Carolina, who has worked for LGBT, secular, and women’s rights for over a decade. She is one of the leading young people in the secular movement, speaking regularly at schools and conferences across the country about feminism and communications. Her writing was recently featured in the best-selling Women's Studies text, Women's Voices, Feminist Visions, alongside writers like Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, Maya Angelou, and Jessica Valenti.

Pages

A reader asked why I didn't have one of these, so I figured out how to make one and it exists. They were kind enough to give me a donation, I was very surprised! So, if there is anyone else out there who was lamenting that this capability did not exist, it exists now, but please, do not feel obligated. Thank you for reading!

To hear men and women speak of our culture as some Feminazi PC nightmare is embarrassing. To act as though we are not to be held accountable for our words and language is even worse. Free speech has never nor will it ever mean immunity from criticism. Words and languages have meaning. If you don’t think what you say or how you phrase it matters, look up Frank Luntz.

Sometimes the bravest words… [TW of all kinds on that–it’s a suicide note reprinted in whole]

Skepticon. Notable both because my lovely partner wrote it (totally not biased, y’all. But really, it’s kickass) and for Micah Weiss’s response, partially reproduced below:

Now you can argue that if we had more people of color, this switch wouldn’t have caused any problems. You would be right. I could argue the comparative difficulty of organizing the largest skeptical conference in the US to finger wagging, but I would be as right as I would be off topic. The simple truth of the matter is that we are as responsible for the narratives we communicate purposefully as those accidentally. The was a narrative communicated that “Skepticon doesn’t take diversity seriously”. That could not be farther from the truth, but the fact that people got that idea is entirely my fault.

….

Demographic homogenization can cause privilege to become systemic. This is one of the most challenging problems we face and we take it very seriously. Like hell if we are going to let Skepticon turn into a circlejerk.

That guy is going places.

I’m cheating a little on this link about body positivity blogs, because I started reading it and got to uncomfortable with the pictures and commentary on them to finish. However, I’ve gotten a few people to summarize the end and that combined with the beginning suggests it leans towards my feelings on those sorts of things–too triggering and unpleasant to read to be helping those who need it most.